


Two Daughters

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Genre: Backstory, Childhood, Disney, Gen, Mechanic(s), POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2010-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:03:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little peek into Audrey's backstory</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Daughters

Audrey was five the first time that her father allowed her to work on a car with him. He had spoken - all her life, really - about having two sons to carry out his dreams, and Audrey never understood why it mattered so much that she and Maria were girls. Maria, who was eight, always got into fights with the neighborhood boys and she almost always won.

And Audrey wanted to become a mechanic, if her papa would let her. Her favorite part of the day was when her papa would come home, scoop her up into his arms, and kiss her cheeks. He smelled like oil and grease and a little of his cologne, and the scent was intoxicating to Audrey.

A few days after her fifth birthday, her father waited for her to finish her breakfast before he went to work. When she was ready, he bundled her into his old truck and they drove to his machine shop.

There was a car waiting in the garage, and he explained that they were going to fix it together. Audrey helped him lay out a grimy sheet in an empty corner of the garage and then positioned herself at the nearest corner. As he took each part out of the engine, her papa explained what it was and how it worked. Then he carefully handed it to her to place in order on the sheet. After a while, he found the problem and showed her exactly why the carburetor was malfunctioning.

Audrey placed the carburetor in its place on the sheet and put a red piece of cloth on top of it to indicate that it needed fixing. They continued dismantling the engine, because, as her papa often said, "finding one broken part doesn’t mean you've found the only problem."

As it turned out, that engine did only have the one problem, and once the entire thing was dismantled, he showed Audrey how to fix the carburetor. Then Audrey carefully handed each piece back to her father in the right order and watched him put them back into the engine space. When they were finished, Audrey sat on her papa's lap while he tested the engine.

It worked perfectly, not that she had a single doubt, and her papa carried her on his shoulders when they walked back into their home that evening. Her mother asked how it went, and her father declared that she was the best helper he had ever had.

That night, as she lay awake in her bed, Audrey was too excited to sleep. She had helped her papa, and he had said that she was his best helper. Maybe someday she could be a great mechanic and her sister could be a great boxer, and their papa would be proud of them. Maybe then it wouldn't matter that Audrey wasn't a boy.


End file.
